(a short story)
by Kerry Ann Wiley
The Diagnosis
We were driving toward the cabin. She tried to talk. The tests and diagnosis had landed hard. Outside the window, the trees blurred past us in streaks of green and shadow. “Stable” had meant something different when she was flat on the table. Now it felt like a sentence. Not dying. Not improving. Just stuck.
“Julian.”
I looked at her.
“What exactly is it?” she asked. “All of it. Not just what they said in the office. What did you hear?”
I turned down the heat, rubbed my hand across my jeans like wiping something off, then nodded. “It’s called length-dependent sensorimotor polyneuropathy.”
“Length-dependent means the longest nerves—legs, feet—are hit first. That’s why you feel it there. Numbness, weakness, muscle control issues. It can move up.”
“To my hands.”
“Yes.”
“And sensorimotor?”
“Both sensation and movement. Not just one. You lose feeling. Control.”
She flexed her fingers. “They said it’s idiopathic,” she murmured.
“No known cause. Not diabetes. Not genetic. They tested for autoimmune triggers. Nothing definite.”
“So, they don’t know why.”
“No.”
The word hit harder than expected. She pressed her thumb against the seatbelt seam. A habit. Automatic.
“Julian,” she said and I could see the question forming in her face before the words reached me.
“What’s the difference between peripheral neuropathy and what they’re calling length-dependent sensorimotor polyneuropathy?”
There was a quiet uncertainty in her voice, as if she was trying to make sense of something that didn’t quite fit. Had they gotten it wrong? I told her the two are closely related—peripheral neuropathy is a broad term for damage to the nerves outside the brain and spinal cord, while length-dependent sensorimotor polyneuropathy describes a more specific pattern.
It tends to affect the longest nerves first, often starting in the feet and moving upward, involving both sensation and movement. So no, they hadn’t necessarily made a mistake—the newer term just offers a little more detail. Still, I understood how that detail could feel like a new kind of uncertainty.
“What about impact? The last word she spoke hung there—long term—and I felt its weight settle in the space between us. I glanced over, unsure how much to say. “
You could lose more function,” I said quietly. “Fine motor control. Balance. Grip.” I hesitated, then added, “You might not run again. Or climb. Or…” The rest didn’t need to be said. It was already there, just beneath the surface, waiting.
“Or write,” she said.
“And short-term?”
“Falls. Atrophy from overcompensating. Chronic fatigue. More bracing. PT.”
She went quiet. Color crept up her neck, across her face.
“Stop,” she said. “Stop.”
The Break
We pulled off on a gravel shoulder. She fumbled for the door handle—missed twice. I caught her hand. A panic attack doesn’t scream at first. It starts with a breath she can’t finish.
Her shoulders twitched, a subtle shiver, like she was trying to shake off something invisible and suffocating. Her breath shifted—short, fast, barely reaching her chest before slipping out again. Each inhale stacked against the next, too tight, too quick. Her hands clenched, then opened, then clenched again, as if her body was cycling through the only motions it could still control.
She didn’t look at me. She was right there, inches away, but already somewhere else—eyes distant, unreachable.
“I’ve lost everything,” she said, her voice barely holding together. It wavered, then cracked open in the middle.
“You don’t even touch me anymore. You don’t touch me like I’m still me.” The last words drifted out, quieter than the rest, but heavier somehow—like she’d been carrying them for too long.
I didn’t answer. Her hands shook. Then her lungs seized—gasp. “Kerry—” I reached out. She folded forward. Elbows on knees. Palms to temples. Spiraling. Not crying. Not speaking. Just unraveling.
Her body jerked with each inhale. Exhales barely there. I could hear the panic rising—breath fighting logic. I moved beside her. Placed a hand on her back. Her spine flinched—but she didn’t move away.
I stayed like that. Still. Listening. Then—seconds or minutes—I couldn’t tell—her breath caught. And her body collapsed into mine. I held her. Not tightly.
Her breath stuttered through my shirt. Fingers twitched in mine. She felt heavier now. Months of appointments. Driving. Waiting. Pretending I didn’t see her disappearing in inches. I’d held it together. Because someone had to.
But on the side of the road, her sobs finally broke me. They didn’t stop. Just kept coming. Deep, full-body grief. She wasn’t holding back.
The Ask
It was dark now. No one said it, but we were staying. “It’s too late,” I said. “Too far to drive.” She didn’t reply. “It’s going to get cold. I need to get the sleeping bags.”
I opened the back hatch. My hands shook. I blamed the air. Everything smelled like fire and rubber. Gear from trips we’d started but never finished. The first sleeping bag snagged. My fingers fumbled the zipper. Not from cold.
I rubbed my hands on my jeans. I didn’t want her to see the tremble. She hadn’t moved. Still curled in the passenger seat. She looked spent.
“Touch me like I’m still me.” echoed in my ears. I didn’t know how long I had waited to hear that. Since before the ring. Since she stopped reaching back.
I laid the bags flat in the back. Foam pad. Emergency setup. Like the Catskills, two summers ago, after the ankle.
I returned to her side. Helped her swing out her legs. She let me support some of her weight. Not all. We got to the back. She sat. Knees up. Hands trembled.
Then—“Please help me take the brace off.” Her voice was slow.
I crouched and undid the first strap. The next strap fought back. I was careful. I didn’t look at her face. Just watched my hands. Her skin. The deep red impressions from pressure. I eased the last strap loose. Slid the brace down her calf. The cold was settling in.
She slipped inside the first sleeping bag. I opened the second, layered it over both of us. Sealed the edge. Sleep didn’t come. She drifted. Her breath kept shifting.
At 2:07 a.m., she moved. Her hand traced up my back.
My breath caught. Once. Sharp. Fast. My mouth opened—but nothing came. The tears did. My grief. My guilt. The version of me I thought she’d stopped needing.
I held her tighter.
The Morning After
At 5:04 a.m., I opened my eyes. We hadn’t moved. But something in her had.
She stirred. I slipped my arm away from her. We moved slowly. I reset the front seats. Cracked the window. The cold air helped. She handed me one sleeping bag, already rolled. The other stayed folded in her lap.
I started the car. The engine startled us both. We pulled onto the road. Gravel crunched. Headlights swept the trees. We were going to the cabin. It had its battle marks, but it was still safe, still ours. Familiar ground, even if we weren’t anymore.
The First Yes
The cabin came into view just after seven. Fog clung to the windows, and the porch boards were dark with moisture. We said nothing. We didn’t need to. It hadn’t changed.
I parked the car and sat for a moment before opening the door. “I’ll go light the fire.”
She nodded, fingers clenched around the blanket. “I need a shower,” she said.
I grabbed the bags while she stepped down on her own—brace still off, gait uneven but holding.
Inside, I turned to the fireplace, stacking kindling, then logs. The flame caught, but my eyes kept drifting. I could hear her moving—slow, deliberate—behind the closed bathroom door. Water ran, then stopped. Twenty minutes passed. Still nothing.
I tried to stay with the fire, but the quiet started pressing in. I crossed the floor barefoot, careful not to make a sound. Paused. Knocked once.
“Yeah.”
“Wanted to see if I could jump in next.”
The door eased open. She stood there in a gray robe, damp hair, skin flushed. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s still hot.”
Steam curled through the room. The mirror was fogged. I stepped into the shower. The water hit hard. My knees almost gave, not from pain, just the weight of it all.
Twenty minutes later, I came back down. Towel over my shoulders, shirt in hand.
She looked up. “We need sleep.”
Her movements up the stairs were slow.
She paused at the top of the stairs. Just for a second. We had gotten used to temporary places and separate beds—what had started as necessity had quietly become habit.
“I can sleep elsewhere,” I said.
She shook her head. “No.” Quieter the second time. “No.”
I moved closer. My hand found her waist. She didn’t move. I stayed there—skin under palm, steady. Then she leaned in and pressed a kiss to my jaw.
What Remains
I woke up after 7:30 a.m. The space beside me—empty. Her robe hung on the bed frame, still swaying slightly. I sat up and listened. I heard water running. Then, stillness.
She was in the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, pausing at the mirror. One hand lingered at her knee—at the scar. It stretched down in a pale, uneven line, a quiet reminder of the fall, the surgery, the months that followed. Not just what the body endured, but what it carried forward.
She stood there, tracing it with her fingertips—slow, familiar, unflinching. I didn’t speak. Her face held the kind of raw expression you don’t look away from. She caught my eyes in the mirror. I walked in, barefoot, the tile cool beneath me.
She turned, stepped into the embrace I offered. “I haven’t looked in a while,” she said. Not regret. Not shame. Just truth. I nodded. “I know.” She stayed there, against me, and something shifted—not erased, not fixed, just a space we hadn’t stood in before, and still, she stayed.
We stayed at the cabin a few days longer than planned. No talk of leaving, no real plan—just the quiet shape of a rhythm: coffee, firewood, her blanket folded in the same place each night. She moved slower, but steadier. I brought in wood before she asked. She folded things that didn’t need folding. When she rested, I stayed close—not hovering, just near.
The coffee was always too weak. She drank it anyway, leaning against the counter while I cooked, hands wrapped around the same chipped mug. Once, she hummed—barely. I didn’t say anything, but I heard it. By the third morning, the light had shifted—low and warm, brushing through the windows like it had remembered us. She was on the porch, knees drawn up, blanket around her shoulders. I joined her. Neither of us spoke.
After a while, I reached into my denim shirt. The chain slipped free. The ring settled in my palm—the sapphire between two emeralds, still catching light like it had never stopped. I’d carried it every day. Not as a hope. Not exactly. Just as something I couldn’t put down.
“I kept it close,” I said.
She looked, paused, and nodded. “I saw it after the tests.”
She looked at the jewelry like it was something she hadn’t let herself miss.
She didn’t reach for it right away.
“Jul,” she said, and her voice caught, hesitating. “It feels like a different life.”
When she finally reached for the ring, it was slow. Her fingers brushed against mine, then closed around it, as if trying to remember how it once felt to belong.
Her fingers moved across the stones.
“I didn’t think I could wear it again,” she said. “Not because I didn’t want to. I just didn’t feel like the person you gave it to.”
I waited.
She turned it in her hand. Once. Then again.
And then—quietly—she slid it on.
It caught for half a second, then settled into place.
She didn’t look at me. But she didn’t take it off.
She leaned into my side.
And I didn’t speak.
I stayed.
The morning stretched out in front of us—quiet, unfinished.
But something had begun.
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